PART 2
That very night, Alex drove directly to his family’s ancestral home in Beacon Hill.
At first, Beatrice denied everything. But as Alex continued questioning her, her explanation began to change.
“Elena was hysterical when she showed up,” Beatrice said smoothly, sipping her tea. “I was protecting your future, Alex. She was trying to trap you into coming back.”
“The envelope had my name on it!” Alex yelled, his voice echoing through the grand parlor.
Alex searched his archived phone records from six years earlier. He discovered a flagged text message from his mother sent during the week of their divorce: If anyone calls the office claiming to be from Elena, let me know before you respond.
The following morning, Alex tracked down Lucia, his former executive assistant at his old firm.
Terrified of becoming involved in legal consequences, Lucia confessed. “Elena called twice,” she admitted, her voice shaking over the phone. “She said it was urgent. Your mother had called the main desk earlier that week and instructed us to route any personal calls from your ex-wife directly to her. On the second call, Elena was crying… she told me she was pregnant with twins. I called your mother immediately to report it.”
Twins. Neither of them knew yet that it was actually quadruplets.
Elena agreed to give Alex twenty minutes at a quiet coffee shop near her office.
“When the second ultrasound revealed it was quadruplets, I panicked and tried to find you again,” she told him, her hands wrapped around a paper cup. “Then they were born premature at thirty-two weeks. I was caught in a nightmare between the NICU, medical bills, four incubators, and running an emerging business. I stopped calling because every closed door told me the same thing: you didn’t care.”
“My mother intercepted every single attempt,” Alex said, his face pale.
“That explains why you never answered,” Elena replied softly. “It doesn’t explain why you walked out on me in the first place.”
Before leaving, Elena took out her phone and showed him a single photograph from six years earlier: four tiny infants connected to monitors inside the neonatal intensive care unit.
“You lost years, Alex,” she said quietly. “I survived them alone.”
Distraught, Alex started searching through his own medical archives from their marriage. He eventually recovered an early diagnostic report from their first fertility specialist that had been misplaced and never given to him.
The original laboratory results showed that Alex had also experienced significant fertility complications.
And Beatrice had known all along.
